


A Reflection Half-Seen

by Chauntlucet



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Gen, I mean, This fic is basically John Uskglass/England, XD, the ultimate otp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22747579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chauntlucet/pseuds/Chauntlucet
Summary: "It is something I suppose, that he still has a place of honor in the King's House. But then they put him in Roman dress and made him hold hands with a actress. I wonder what he would say to that?"Little does Strange know that John Uskglass has indeed seen the painting in Windsor Castle, and has Opinions of his own.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 18





	A Reflection Half-Seen

The man in the portrait is not him.

He had come to see the mural. Why should he not have? He has seen the white walls and songbirds and the guarded treasures of Zerzura, and has been to Cokaygne where the streets are paved in pastry and the skies and rivers are filled with grilled geese and fish. He has riddled with Dragons and entertained Winter in his own home. He has been a stroke of lightning in a storm and a gust of wind in a blizzard and has spoken to the Hills and the Stars and the Trees in their own tongue. To visit Windsor? Well, uninvited it was -- _perhaps_ \-- overstepping his bounds. He had made his agreements long ago after all, and still he _did_ count the Kings and Queens of Southern England among his allies. 

But he came here as no enemy, no conqueror. There is no army in his train, and the skies of London remain free of flashing black feathers and bone-stirring cacophony. He remembers, after all. His agreements he keeps, and allies he knows are too valuable a thing to simply discard. In any case, really, they _had_ invited him. His portrait they’d painted on their wall, and is that not enough?

Certainly, atleast, it seemed an invitation for his _curiosity._

So, he sees the man upon the wall. What can there be to say? Oh, he must have _looked_ the part to an outsider’s eyes: to a King raised an exile and born some two centuries too late; to an Italian painter raised in a tradition of legends and stories apart from those that passed among the common folk here -- perhaps never hearing them at all. The man staring back at him is proud and remote, certainly, his face unreadable as he sits in his dusky world surrounded by figures of mystery and creatures of magic. But he is….

_Well,_ So thinks the man standing in the hall, his head canting to the side as his weight all shifts to one foot, _he is wrong._ He is too...posed, too _arranged._ Everything is _arranged_ in these paintings, of course, and why should this one be the exception? The capering fauns and satyrs, the proud unicorn beside him, and the fierce manticore, snarling, just there at his feet -- everything down to the flowing folds of the robes they’ve draped about him.

He has never worn robes like that, of course, but it is the style now -- so he has gathered, atleast -- to wear the mask of a Roman or a Greek, and to abide by those ancient ideals of rationality and reason, golden ratios and perfect balance and mathematical beauty. And that is the problem _exactly._

His lips quirk upwards as he recognizes it, why it is this man is so _unfamiliar_ to him. There is no wildness to him, nothing of _Faerie._ He is a purely human King, as much as Edward to his left. (Edward, who he cannot help but note, is also not quite Edward. They’d gotten his nose wrong). 

But, perhaps that was never the point. Not really. It was not the Raven King the painter wanted nor needed here, not the _Magician King,_ and certainly it was not what this new southern King wanted. It is Merely the King of the North they want, to compliment the Southern King sitting on the other side. To ask for anything more would be entirely the wrong kind of magic. 

What else could he call this after all? It _was_ magic, of a sort. The same invoked by Sidhe-folk in their florilegia, a borrowing of power, to support one’s own. Two English Kings, the ones who’s legacy this new one claimed, here as a reminder of his decent, of the power he came from. 

He might have been angered -- his _name_ he protected, so to have his _likeness_ used in such a manner? But he knew his allies and he remembered. He had made promises and agreements with the Kings and Queens of England long ago. So, this he could allow. But when the time came, this also he would remember.

All debts were paid in their due time.

His eyes move from his own portrait, sliding along its length. In the empty hall (and he would ensure, it would _remain_ empty, until he was done) his feet click softly against the floor. They have a woman standing between the two Kings. A Goddess she was meant to be, Britannia he supposed, from her placement and her golden helm. She was, again, far too Roman, and _far_ too human.

Where was the chilled and desolate beauty of a morning's mist about her? Where were the fierce wildness of heath and moor? There was nothing in her of Cumbrian mountains, of the shadowy depths of forests or of winter starlight. There was none of the golden sunlight of a summer’s evening, falling over the countryside, that he would so often watch from the parapets of the towers of his home in Newcastle. 

Oh, and that was not to say she was not _pretty_ enough! Were he of a mind for it, he might even have taken her back to Faerie with him, but that was entirely beside the point.

A soft sigh escapes him, and once more, that crooked half-smirk just flickers across his lips. He shakes his head, and then he speaks, addressing...the room? Himself? Britannia? 

“Do you think they will ever truly understand?” A pause, “Do you think they will ever _want_ to?” That last question elicits something of an almost bitter half-chuckle from him. His eyes turn to meet those of the woman in the painting, then, and he sweeps down into a low bow (a rare sight indeed from him!). Rising once more, he presses two fingers to his lips, before pressing them lightly to Britannia's own.

“My lady,” He murmurs, “Until we meet again.”

And with those words, he was gone.


End file.
